The Right Rev. David Giuliano

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

This Moderator's Blog originally appeared on WonderCafe*.

Lately, I’ve been holding babies whenever I get the chance. The “fresher” the better. Last week at Church House, Larisa arrived for lunch with one of our committees and brought three-week-old Elijah along. Accusations of “baby-hog” were murmured about the dining room until I relinquished him to others. Then in church on Sunday, here in Marathon, it was Nikola who is just a little longer out of the sea of mystery and into the air than Elijah. Robin was leading worship and spoke about her work at the women’s shelter. It sounds different—more tender and more urgent—with a baby in your arms.

I’m suffering from a bad case of nostalgia. Each time I hold a baby I recall dreamy Sunday afternoons napping on the couch with Jeremiah or Naomi flopped on my chest. There is something about the smell of a baby’s hair, the way they move their lips in their sleep, that fosters a special kind of peace.

Twice this week I drove home “the wrong way” so that I could slowly roll past the house where our children grew up. I remember how Naomi lifted her feet in horror the first time she walked barefoot in the grass. How for a year or so she insisted on being called “Princess Pretty.” (“Is Princess Pretty smart and brave and strong too?” I would ask. “Nope, just pretty.” Sigh.). I remember Jeremiah and his lion puppet and scratching his back at bedtime and reading “Time for Bed Sleepy Head” to him every night. I remember their imaginary game “Chris and John” whose parents were dead (Pearl and I wondered about that!) and the day they cut Naomi’s hair off in the bathroom so that she would look more like “John.”

I had better stop. I could go on for a long time. Because, like many in the church, I am full of nostalgia. Remember when the choir loft was packed? Remember when there were 500 kids in our Sunday School? Remember when everyone in town came to all our events? Remember…. As Robertson Davies writes in A Voice from the Attic, too many people confuse their idea of a satisfactory future with their memory of an idealized past.

It’s easy to forget, in my nostalgic narcotic haze, the sleepless nights. It’s easy to forget when my single aspiration was to end a day without the dirt of upturned houseplants and spaghetti stuck to my socks. Or when I rarely arrived at the church without baby puke on my shirt. It’s easy to forget the sometimes frantic pace, the impossibility of planning anything, or the gouge of Duplo block to the arch of one’s bare foot.

It’s easy to forget the desperation for adult conversation uninterrupted by crying, fighting, or questions: “What’s up in your life these—Honey, I don’t know why we have eyebrows—days? Are you—Don’t lick the sofa, Sweet Pea—healing from the—No biting, you two, use your words!—divorce?”

As a church we forget our collusion with colonialism. We forget the racism, sexism, and homophobia—to name a few of the isms—that found (still sometimes find) homes in our congregations. We forget the arrogance that shaped our mission in the world. We forget the compromises we made to placate envelope holders and to hold onto our place in our culture.

Pearl and I are at a new stage in life. Jeremiah and Naomi are off to university. They are adults, mostly. We are still parents and they are still our children and always will be. (My own Mom still asks if I’ve been wearing a hat.) But we will never be parents again, in the way we were when they were young. That stage of our lives has ended—the joys romanticized and the failures forgiven. We are talking about what this next stage of life might hold.

It seems to me a stage of life in the church is ending too. It’s time to romanticize the joys and forgive the failures, be grateful for the ways in which our past has shaped us and begin to imagine what this next stage of life will be like. We can trust that God’s grace calls us to a future rich with new adventures and blessings because we have known the past.

The call of discipleship is not to keep doing what we’ve done but to be faithful on the Way. Each new stage of the journey brings with it joys and challenges, beauty and heartache. Each new chapter arrives beckoning us to an unknown shore and with a promise of adventure and joy.

Nostalgia is a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.